Need help writing hebrew in Linux
 

I'm running Mandrake 9.1 and I heard that you could type Hebrew in linux for text editors and internet browsers. I know in winblows xp all you do is click the language chooser on the task bar. How do I set it up in Mandrake where I can switch back and forth between typing hebrew and typing english.

Thanks

by the way, i'm not too good yet at knowing which file does what so i'll probably need a step by step walk through. Thanks

first of all do you hvae the files for herbrew installed on your system because i know you need those.. i think it just creates a new font or something but im not sure im going to try downloading it and tell you how to set it up..

Hebrew In Linux
 

It's most definitely not as easy as just installing a font file. I don't use Mandrake and never have, but you could install the "BST Hebrew" TrueType font available from http://www.biblestudytools.com/ (it's under resources somewhere) -- that should allow you to type using openoffice in a hebrew font, but it's not the best solution, nor am I sure if it will work entirely well with vocalized texts, etc. I'm assuming mandrake has some automagic font installer if you want to go that route.

An easier option is to if you're using a graphical login ike GDM or KDM you can switch easily between languages if you've got the support installed. KDE has a nice language pack for arabic which works well for me, but I prefer not to use KDE. They should have one for hebrew (but that won't let you /type/ hebrew text).

As for browsing in Hebrew, there's a language packs for Mozilla available at http://www.mozilla.org/ which is as easy as clicking a button. Mozilla 1.3.1 is the latest version of Mozilla that has the Hebrew language pack. The direct URL for localization projects in mozilla is: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/l10n/mlp_status.html

I'm a arabic linguist and I prefer to use ArabTeX which is a package for LaTeX which also supports Hebrew (despite it's name). LaTeX is a text-based type setting language which is extremely powerful. The output looks pretty damn good too.

This is an example what a LaTeX file using ArabTeX would look like:

\documentstyle[12pt,arabtex,atrans,nashbf]{article}
\vocalize
\begin{document}
\setnashbf \Large
\begin{arabtext}
.talaba waladuN min 'abIhi 'an ya^stariya lahu
\end{arabtext}
\end{document}

The output is in the form of a postscript file (which is easily printable from linux, it's similar to a PDF file but superior. In Mandrake you should be able to read it with: ggv or ghostview): http://judecca.aculei.net/~blcknight/arabtext.ps

TeTex (a LaTeX distribution) and ArabTeX are available from http://www.ctan.org/ but the install isn't trivial just from a tarball.

Perhaps someone with more experience with Mandrake can give you a better distribution-specific answer. It's definitely worth a shot trying some of my suggestions out, but multilingual support in Linux for alphabets other than latin is indeed lacking. It's possible to do and it does do it very well when it's configured properly, it just usually does not work out of the box.


- Stephen Benjamin
blcknight@judecca.aculei.net

re:
 

What do you use in KDE to set the language set. I can't find it. Also, the site for fonts was down so I don't know where to find any

re
 

bump

ehh i guess i was wrong then :-p

I have the language set setup in KDE but all it does is translate boxes and menus into hebrew. It doesn't allow me to write in Hebrew or even to write right to left. Any one with any ideas. i'm a hebrew student and need to have my linux box able to write in hebrew. Thanks

If you recall from my previous message in regards to KDE hebrew support....

I would really reccomend learning LaTeX, there's a primer at
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/.
I'm an arabic student, and that's really the only good solution I've found for trying arabic text. Perhaps there's someone else out there with a better solution -- because I would love one!

I also found a Hebrew distribution of linux, I'm not sure how well that would work for you: http://www.mpthrill.com/peanut/.

There's also a collection of Hebrew Red Hat RPMs at:
http://hishome.net/kova/

Also, I was helping a friend install Red Hat the other day, I noticed it has language options, I'm not sure about the extent of it's capability as far as creating hebrew text. I run gentoo and I'm pretty much on my own configuring my system for arabic support, there's nothing in the portage tree for it. There's gotta be a better solution out there, but I can't find one.

Mandrake 9.1 works great with Hebrew. If you install from scratch, simply select Hebrew as your first or second supported language (I have it as second selection because I prefer all menus and messages in English).

It also sets X to switch languages using your choice of keys. Most KDE 3.x apps and Gnome 2.x work great with Hebrew (and arabic). You should install better fonts than the ones provided from culmus.sf.net (those will be in 9.2 as default) and from corefonts.sf.net.

If you already installed Mandrake, you will have to change some settings by yourself. The best guide I know is http://www.penguin.org.il/guides/hebrew_x/ . It is in Hebrew but since you want to write in Hebrew I assume you can also read Hebrew.

If you encounter problems you can ask questions in www.whatsup.org.il where there will be many people that can help.

If you prefer English, please check www.iglu.org.il . This site is in English and also have a guide for setting Hebrew (I am not sure how current it is) as well as a mailing list for support in English.

As to editors, try Open Office 1.1, AbiWord 2.x, KWord 2.x, KWrite 3.x and many others.

My preferred editor is Katoob that is part of the Arabeyes project and supports Hebrew as well.

Hope that helps.

I was wondering how do u setup a key to switch between language layouts? I couldn't realize how so I had to reinstall Mandrake, choosing hebrew as a prefered language, how can you set it manually?

/etc/X11/XF86Config-4

--------------------------

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us,il"
Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
EndSection
----------------------------------------

Just update your existing entry as noted above. Alt-Shift will now switch between Hebrew/English and also toggle the shift lock as an indicator of the selected language.